Volkswagen Test Rigging Follows a Long Auto Industry Pattern - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/volkswagen-test-rigging-follows-a-long-auto-industry-pattern.html <comment><USER2> Very similar to the way Intel, years ago, rigged its Pentium CPU to excel on certain industry benchmarks.

[http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/intel- pentium-...](http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/intel-pentium-4/)

<comment><USER3> Yep, or GPU benchmark cheats back in the early 2000s

<comment><USER4> except for, you know, the environmental damage.

<comment><USER5> There was an interesting follow up on this which pointed out three things, one GM killed people with their ignition switch cover-up and the CEO didn't resign, the "fix" is a software patch to leave the engine controller in 'minimize emissions' mode all the time, and in spite of this 'cheat' emissions overall have come down 76% in the last 10 years.

So was it more damaging that a small percentage of cars were cheating on their emissions? Yes. But how much more damaging? Not much, especially since diesel cars are a very small fraction of VW's sales in the US.

Overall it is better that this group of cars were cheating as opposed to say Toyota's gasoline powered cars. The overall effect was so small it was not detected by the EPA's and CARB monitoring efforts on air quality which they model against the assumption that people are complying with the regulations.

<comment> at-fates-hands >> Overall it is better that this group of cars were cheating as opposed to say Toyota's gasoline powered cars

I'm assuming this is due to the fact diesels run cleaner than gas powered cars? This is what I've been told my whole life, so it seems this part of the scandal has been forgotten or overshadowed by the bad deeds of rigging their cars?

<comment><USER6> There are a hell of a lot more gasoline-powered Toyotas out there than diesel VWs.

At least in the U.S., diesels are generally dirtier. That might be because our diesel has mostly been high-sulphur, not the cleaner diesel that Europe has. Most diesel engines are built for heavy equipment, tractor-trailers, or pickup trucks in the U.S.

<comment><USER7> Ultra low sulfur diesel has been the law in the US for highway vehicles since 2007

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the software actually designed to "dupe" regulators?

Might there be many legitimate reasons why the emissions vs performance tradeoff might be tailored to driving conditions? Of course when the car is idling it would make sense to minimize emissions as much as possible, just as an idle CPU can utilize a lowered clock speed.

<comment><USER9> Apparently in the VW case, this was their specific intent. Also, limits are limits. You can't have the software allow violations of emissions limits because the driver wants to go faster at a particular point.

That isn't to say that the CEO is at fault, nor would it be expected that the CEO of an enormous company with thousands of engineers would know about or direct specific engineering decisions (and in fact he denies that he knew). More likely than not, he issued unrealistic directives to the engineering team, who met the demands in the only way they could at the time. That doesn't make it right by any stretch, but that appears to be what happened.

<comment><USER8> > You can't have the software allow violations of emissions limits because the > driver wants to go faster at a particular point.

It depends on how the emissions are measured. They could be measured per RPM, per mile, per gallon, per pound transported, or by any of those over time, or some basket of utilization patterns modeled after real-world use.

If you slam the accelerator to the floor, the vehicle produces more emissions than if you'd continued along at a steady pace. Emissions control is a combination of active and passive systems, along with careful moderation of inputs to the engine. So it seems plausible that a complex, computer- controlled vehicle would optimize emissions vs performance by modifying many of the available variables in response to driving conditions.

<comment><USER9> _> It depends on how the emissions are measured._

That is certainly a good point. However in this case, the specifics of what they were doing obviously crossed the line. Normally I roll my eyes when I hear about EPA issues, given that agency's penchant for making mountains out of molehills and ravenous appetite for horrendous fines. But in this case, many rational, scientifically credible people all seem to agree that they were intentionally and egregiously violating the law.

<comment><USER8> > scientifically credible people all seem to agree that they were > intentionally doing this.

That does seem to be the case. I'm curious when the dust settles if the spirit or the letter (or neither, both) of the EPA requirement was violated.

<comment><USER10> You can read more detail in the letter from the EPA to VW: [http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov- caa-09-18-15....](http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov- caa-09-18-15.pdf)

Here is the explanation for what VW is accused of doing.

\--- begin quote ---

Specifically, VW manufactured and installed software in the electronic control module (ECM) of these vehicles that sensed when the vehicle was being tested for compliance with EPA emission standards. For ease of reference, the EPA is called this the "switch". The "switch" senses whether the vehicle is being tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's operation, and barometric pressure. These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure used for emission testing for EPA certification purposes. During EPA emission testing, the vehicles' ECM ran software which produced compliant emission results under an ECM calibration that VW referred to as the "dyno calibration" (referring to the equipment used in emissions tested, called a dynamometer). At all other times during normal vehicle operation, the "switch" was activated and the vehicle ECM software ran a separate "road calibration" which reduced the effectiveness of the emission control system (specifically the selective catalytic reduction or the lean NOx trap). As a result, emissions of NOx increased by a factor of 10 to 40 times above the EPA complian levels, depending on the type of drive cycles (e.g., city, highway).

\--- end quote ---

And here is what happened when this was found out and the EPA and CARB tried to find out what was happening:

\--- begin quote ---

VW continued to assert to CARB and the EPA that the increased emissions from these vehicles could be attributed to various technical issues and unexpected in-use conditions. VW issued a voluntary recall in December 2014 to address the issue. CARB, in coordination with the EPA, conducted follow up testing of those vehicles both in the laboratory and during normal road operation to confirm the efficacy of the recall. When the teting showed only a limited benefit to the recall, CARB broadened the testing to pinpoint the exact technical nature of the vehicles' poor performance, and to investigate why the vehicles' onboard diagnostic system was not detecting the increase emissions. None of the potential technical issues suggested by VW explained the higher test results consistently confirmed during CARB's testing. It became clear that CARB and the EPA would not approve certificates of conformity for VW's 2016 model year diesel vehicles until VW could adequately explain the anomalous emissions and ensure the agencies that the 2016 model year vehicles would not have similar issues. Only then did VW admit it had designed and installed a defeat device in these vehicles in the form of a sophisticated software algorithm that detected when a vehicle was undergoing emissions testing.

\--- end quote ---

<comment><USER8> thanks for posting this! Indeed it seems like VW had no choice but to admit to what it did.

Is there any information about how this happened organizationally within VW? Was there widespread awareness?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This VW scandal has done everyone a big favour. There is a chance that air pollution by all cars - petrol and diesel - will be taken that bit more seriously in the future.

Anyone with the remotest interest in automobiles knows that petrol engine cat- converters do not work when cold, i.e. for the first fifteen minutes or so. Therefore all of those school runs and all of those trips to the local supermarket to pick up a few things are pollution nightmares for people with asthma. Nobody thinks this through to that conclusion, even though it is not rocket science.

The real evil with diesel is the ultra small particles that are too fine for one's lungs to cough up. This has not been addressed, again, it is just the way it is and someone else's problem - maybe that asthma sufferer.

This don't care attitude has history, our parents were quite happy to drive around pumping lead into the faces of children just because everyone did it. Maybe there can be a turning point here with car driving becoming the new smoking, with drivers made pariahs too.

As much as VW are a remarkable company in many ways with many highly desirable products, I do hope that the lawsuits keep on coming - total bankruptcy would be just desserts. I also hope for contagion with pretty much every other car maker also given a severe grilling.

As a product the car really is enemy number one as far as the environment is concerned. There is the noise, the danger, the wars for oil as well as the air pollution. Imagine how much our urban centres would be improved if every road had those rows and rows of tin boxes removed.

On a recent trip to the countryside I opened a local paper. Page after page concerned road accidents. It seemed that was all there was to report. We have got to move on from these horrible little tin boxes and the filth they spew as our lives depend on it.

<comment><USER12> I would wager than statistically, internal combustion engines have saved far more lives than they've cost.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps historically, but shift your gaze forward and the opposite is likely to be true. Climate change will likely lead to the end of many millions of lives (billions?). Not to mention, of course, all the death and disease that has been caused as a result of the various pollutants produced by ICEs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I looked for the "European Federation for Transport and Environment," which is cited to be the agency that alerted of the differences between laboratory and real world testing. I'd add the link from their website too:

[http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/vw%E2%80%99...](http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/vw%E2%80%99s-cheating- just-tip-iceberg)

The reason is their expectation that (quote): "The evidence suggests he will not be the last head of a carmaker offering apologies in the next few months as other manufacturers will be found making use of "defeat devices" for tricking laboratory tests."

</comment><comment><USER15> This.

People at work are saying this is the end of VW. The fines are so big, they will never be able to pay them. My answer is "Lawyers". VW's lawyers will argue and deal until fines, civil penalties are slaps on the wrist and written off to reduce next year's taxes.

We really need corporate "death" penalty. And if by some miracle, regulators grow balls and ability to beat corporate lawyers. All the executives will ride home on golden parachutes. Company will be restructured. Business will continue as normal. Only people paying for this crime will be 11million owners of fucked up cars, thousands of "little people" workers and the Environment.

<comment><USER16> >We really need corporate "death" penalty.

Well, IDK. Those who order criminal behavior are the ones higher up who have a lot of connections and will find a new job. The average worker will pay the price by being long-term unemployed.

If you want the regulators and their lawyers to grow fangs, they should go after the executives and jail them. And strengthen whistleblower laws.

</comment></comment><comment> tefo-mohapi Can we then rely on electric car manufacturers as they rely heavily on software? Something to ponder about as we also discuss it in this podcast [http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke- as-...](http://www.africantechroundup.com/volkswagen-up-in-smoke-as-the-south- african-government-is-set-to-investigate/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I do wonder what the "fix" will be for these cars. The test drive is a quintessential part of the purchasing decision in my experience, and potentially the fix will significantly alter the drive feel.

</comment><comment><USER18> Time for Consumer Reports to do emissions testing.</comment>


Microsoft attributes $80-$100 million dollars in revenue to a shade of blue - <AUTHOR> http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1025 <comment><USER3> This is the frightening reality of what happens when you have a large business where everything scales multiplicatively and then you make a trivial change which is net-beneficial. People _want_ this to be impossible because it strikes you as intuitively wrong that five minutes of work could be worth eight figures. Reality doesn't care what you think, though.

Relatedly, and more prosaicly, if you average one successful A/B test with a 5% lift per month, and you do _nothing else_ , your business will grow at about 80% per year. Multiplicatively effective businesses are a wonderful place to be in life.

Then I look over at Zynga at all where you can do multiplicative effectiveness within the context of a viral loop, which is just so effective I'm almost certain it goes against my religion somehow.

<comment><USER4> Don't take this the wrong way but on every comment I've read from you, there is "A/B" :-)

Not sure how Zynga's effectivness might be against your religion, but "A/B" is part of you somehow: religiously or not.

<comment><USER5> A/B = the core of the scientific method.

<comment><USER4> Not so sure about that...

It looks to me that A/B leads quite easily to a local optimum.

But it's better than no method at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the article says that #0044CC is the $80 million color. But if you check bing.com they're using #0033CC. So what's up? Maybe it's a trick to get everyone to switch to the obviously inferior #0044CC color while bing laughs all the way to the bank with the real killer color!!

Bing - #0033CC Google - #2200CC DuckDuckGo - #3068DD Facebook - #3B5998 (what where THEY thinking? ;-)

<comment><USER7> The point isn't that there's a magic colour, it's that they A/B split tested the new colour against the old one and saw an increase in the number of people clicking. It doesn't mean the process stops right there.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I was being sarcastic. :-)

<comment><USER7> I know, but I was being pedantic :)

<comment><USER8> and I'm being tautalogical :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> These are notes from a presentation by Paul Ray. It's an hour long so I thought these would be better to digest. The $80 million color blue comment is down by "Data Driven Process".

If you're interested in the full video presentation you can check it out here <http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL06>

</comment><comment><USER9> "A specific color of blue (#0044CC) drove $80-$100 million dollars a year increase over the light blue the design team tried first."

I call bullshit on this statement. There is no way they could have measured this reliably unless the only thing they changed for an entire year was the color of the links.

<comment><USER10> Why would they have to change it for an entire year? Maybe it's enough to test it for 1 day, or 10 minutes for all I know. If it improved clicking rate and revenue by 9%(+-1%) and after 1 year they've got $1 billion of revenue, then you could say that 8~10% of that billion likely came from Magic Blue.

<comment><USER9> You want to sample for 10 minutes or 1 day and extrapolate for 1 year ? The results would be meaningless.

Even if you sample 1 _continuous_ month you could have badly flawed results (for example you might have sampled only early adopters, which might behave differently; and that's just one example of the many, many factors that can make signal indistinguishable from noise). Now I'm sure that the guys working on Bing A/B testing know what they are doing, but I just can't believe a change in link color would bring a "$80-$100 million dollars a year increase" (from a total of ~2000 million $/year revenue which I extrapolate from this [http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/fy10/earn_rel_q2_10.m...](http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/fy10/earn_rel_q2_10.mspx#income) but which includes all revenue of the Microsoft Online Service Business - <USER2> don't know how much of that is generated by Bing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh? The article makes no sense at all. I mean WTF?:

"But something was troubling me with this number. In color theory the thing doesn't work like that. In order something to be complete red + green + blue should be 255. But in this case we have (0 Red + 68 green +204blue = 272) And 272 <> 255."

<comment><USER12> Each color goes from 0 to 255. It's not a sum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, good. They found the hyper-intelligent shade of blue from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

(Actually, Google does the same kind of color testing.)

</comment><comment><USER14> >> "Guess what? Microsoft also tested multiple versions of blue for links in their search results. A specific color of blue (#0044CC) drove $80-$100 million dollars a year increase over the light blue the design team tried first."

You can't change a color, see things increase, and claim it's all down to a change of color. Also as bing "increased", Live "decreased". Has Bing been successful?

It makes for a fun PR story, but it's complete BS.

Whatever happened to science? How much money did Live search make? How much is Bing making? Have they been able to add any traffic?

Some hard data would be interesting.

One point to note is that they essentially copied the colors straight from Google.

<comment><USER15> It's called A/B testing. You serve people one of two versions of a page at random, and test which performs better. With enough data, you can be pretty damn certain that the single change caused the results. It is, in fact, hard science.

There are obviously a couple of caveats. First, you need to run the two tests in parallel as you allude to, and second the separation between the samples needs to be completely random. I would assume that Microsoft can keep these caveats in mind.

<comment><USER16> It think they'll need to do some A/B/A testing to be sure.

Switch back to the original shade only for those that experienced the new shade. Maybe they'll see another multi-million dollar increase? That way you could further prove that it's indeed the color that made the difference and not simply the fact that the page was changed at all.

Added:

 _The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied, not in response to any particular experimental manipulation._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect>

<comment><USER17> Personally I like to A/B test with new users. But I guess on an open website like Bing (instead of one with logins) you won't be able to really know if someone has visited it before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting that the url of the search result is also green, like Google. I just opened the two sites side-by-side and their results use mostly the same color scheme:

Blue Title Black description Green URL

I would definitely say MS went with a the "familiarity factor."

</comment><comment><USER19> In case anyone's interested in pedantic details, the color appears to be #0033CC (not #0044CC) and it can best be described as STRONG VIOLET (according to the Color Curious iPhone app).

</comment><comment><USER20> So they found the missing shade of blue!

</comment><comment><USER21> Think I'll stick with DuckDuckGo.

</comment><comment><USER22> They should name that color "Hooloovoo".</comment>


Ask HN: Do you aggregate your social networks/what do you use? - <AUTHOR>

With new social sites cropping up and more information to manage in more places, how do you deal with the social sites you are a member of? Do you visit individually? Or do you manage them using a third party app (web or desktop) to aggregate and connect with your friends/followers? If you could design a service to bring your profiles together what would it do? <comment><USER2> I have my own little aggregator running, it's still very much under development though. I'm trying to get away from the 'there goes the neighbourhood' feeling that almost every social network seems to suffer from sooner or later.

I think that there is much more 'value' in an upvote or a downvote of an article / comment than just the 'karma' the way HN,/., digg and so on use it.

Easier said than done though :)

Also, I absolutely suck at design...

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://friendfeed.com/>

\-- MV

<comment><USER4> I think friendfeed has almost all the features i would want, except a user base comparable to twitter. Most of the people in my network tend more towards twitter, so FF hasn't proved that useful for me yet.

Otherwise you can aggregate bunch of social network profiles already, and for the ones not supported you can add a custom RSS feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I browse them individually. I don't really trust giving my credentials to aggregators. I only really use a few so it isn't worth it to have a separate app/site.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use friendbinder (<http://friendbinder.com> invite code HN) which is my start up

<comment><USER7> Nice site! Can you clarify what friendbinder has over Friendfeed? Also, I wished you used OAuth for Twitter, not asking for a username/password.

<comment><USER6> Yes oauth is on my todo list - it seems to have settled down now. We are different to friendfeed in that you friends don't have to join in order for us to aggregate their content your friends are imported from the networks you are on like in a twitter client. Also we can fetch protected content such as flickr family/friends photos, private twitter and facebook content that you have access to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I stopped using MySpace except for IM on my phone. Twitter posts to Facebook, and I only use 3rd party twitter apps. If I have to use Facebook to reply to a message, I use the iPhone app. So I guess I use my iPhone to aggregate them all.

</comment><comment><USER9> i am currently mostly visiting them once in a while except a few which i visit regularly.

Besides that can any buddy suggest me any desktop application for such <\- avoid suggesting flock coz i don't like it.

<comment><USER4> There aren't many desktop apps that add everything in one place on the desktop.

For friendfeed, twitter, facebook, flickr you can use feedalizr (<http://www.feedalizr.com/>).

Some people seem to like Seesmic for FB,Twitter if you're a power user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I do: browser bookmarks + regular calendar reminders "should I visit network xyz?". (No email notifications or anything.)

If I could design a service... It would pick the _type_ of new stuff of each network of my choosing and aggregate like a Feedreader. With type I mean for example: new entries on my wall in a given Ning community, but no personal messages and aggregate those together with friend requests on Facebook.</comment>


Pricenoia shuts down - <AUTHOR> http://pricenoia.tumblr.com/post/96524879555

<comment><USER2> This part is the one I'd be most worried about:

"They also wiped all the commission fees we were keeping there."

Amazon can be a jerk and unilaterally change the rules, but wiping out their commision goes beyond that. I know Google does the same, but it's not an example to follow.

It's odd because Amazon has got a good reputation as a fair arbiter of disputes for buyers, but it seems not in this case.

Things like these might impact the perception in other cases, I always thought Amazon AWS would have better customer support than Google's developer offerings, this might make me rethink that (I never had to contact AWS support yet and read mostly positive things about them, so this is surprising).

I guess they violated some provision of the Amazon TOS?

<comment><USER3> Amazon has a good reputation from consumers, many people in the retail space who deal with them find them quite difficult (and arrogant) to work with.

The only company I've found worse is Walmart in the US. But US retailers in general like to make one anothers' lives as difficult as possible, even when they depend on each other to even exist, I don't get it! In western europe (aside from a few French companies) most businesses are pretty cooperative, and want to reduce workload not increase it arbitrarily (looking at you US companies, again).

I just think Americans love bureaucracy. It reminds me of Futurama with the "central bureaucracy" where everyone there takes pleasure in making things as slow and inefficient as possible.

<comment><USER4> Suppliers and retailers on opposite sides of the table, both trying to get the best deal. I don't know why they wouldn't have an adversarial relationship.

<comment><USER3> You're talking about buying/selling, I am talking about what happens after that has taken place. After a supplier has agreed to sell at X price and a buyer has agreed to buy at X price they're no longer in an adversarial relationship, they're now in a symbiotic one.

How is it you think product physically moves from company A to company B? Through osmosis? There are physical trucks, and a ton of technological infrastructure behind the scenes to make that happen (from orders/invoices, through to inventory metadata (e.g. expiry dates), and all of the organisation that has to happen so all the trucks don't appear at the loading dock at the same/wrong time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple of months ago Amazon changed _its own_ price tracker to make it much less useful than it was before. I'm talking about the "Important messages about items in your Cart" that appears at the top of your cart when any prices have changed since the last time you viewed it.

They've had this feature for many years, of course. It used to be an incredibly verbose list with a bunch of boilerplate text repeated for every item, and the items were in apparently random order.

With only a few items in your cart this wouldn't matter much, but I use the Saved Items for a list of things I might want to pick up sometime but don't need right now. So I may have as many as a hundred items or more there. With Amazon prices fluctuating as much as they do - often by only a few pennies - it was hard to spot the more interesting price changes.

A couple of years ago they made some nice improvements to this feature on both the desktop and mobile sites. All the boilerplate was pulled out making the list much easier to scan, and the list was sorted in descending order by price change. So the items with the most interesting price changes were right at the top.

But a couple of months ago this list took a big step downhill. On mobile, the item names are no longer tappable links, and on both desktop and mobile the sorting was taken out! The list is still nicely formatted, but it's back in random order again, so the items with significant price changes are hard to find among all the two-or-three-penny changes.

I thought this was probably just a bug, but now I wonder if it was a deliberate move on Amazon's part. It seems they not only want to shut down third party price trackers, they don't want their own tracker to be very easy to use either.

<comment><USER6> One would think it is not in Amazon's best interest if their customers are vigilant in price comparisons. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The scary part of this isn't that they were denied access. It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal.

As an entrepreneur this is probably one of the number 1 nightmare scenarios: one day you're in business, the next day you're not.

We always say never build a business off an ecosystem you don't control but the fact is there are many, many businesses that do just fine from it - and on the flip side, even non-ecosystem businesses are fragile in other ways (such as Uber being regulated into illegality in certain parts of the US and Asia).

That's just business! Somewhere, someone is just waiting to fuck you over :) the challenge is to make your fortune or build up your defenses before they do!

<comment><USER8> > It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal.

And even if there was an appeal process it would still be unilaterally decided by Amazon.

It's the same feeling I get from Google whenever something goes down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My price comparison tool Shoptimate.com got hit a few months back. It's not Amazon only so I can keep the lights on but it sucks for Pricenoia.

Amazon has been changing the rules lately. They're not allowing installable software anymore and only allowing mobile apps that are not focused on shopping. They also refuse websites optimized for mobile. This is after they excluded affiliates over the state tax issues in the US.

Wikipedia says that Amazon gets 40% of their revenue from affiliates. They're probably dominant enough that they don't need to rely on affiliates as much as they used to.

<comment><USER10> This isn't a new thing. Amazon hasnt allowed installable software (without prior approval) nor have they allowed price comparison sites for years and years and years. Actually, have they ever allowed it?

<comment><USER9> This changed last year. It now says: "Except as agreed between you and us in a separate written agreement (...) you will not use any Content or Special Link (...) on or in connection with: a. any client-side software application" [https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper...](https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation)

But it used to say: "You will not include on your site, display, or otherwise use Special Links or Content in connection with any spyware, malware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other malicious or harmful code, or any software application not expressly and knowingly authorized by users prior to being downloaded or installed on their computer or other electronic device." [https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _On a side note, Amazon does not allow the use of its API for price trackers, they made that clear, and has lately made it very difficult to get the data in other ways._

If people can still access the same data just by going to Amazon with their browser, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't be able to get the data if they really wanted to. I've always believed that APIs on websites are more than just convenience - they're a way for corporations to exert control over the data they give out, sort of like DRM.

In the same way, they're also pretty trivial to circumvent; with webscraping, the major issue is that your traffic stands out, but distribute it widely enough and it won't look anything different from the _massive_ traffic Amazon gets already. You could make a browser plugin and have your users do it for you (just make sure your privacy policies are stated clearly...!)

I'm willing to bet that Amazon's data is already being scraped by many other sites, so that also gives rise to this similarity: the "pirates" win, the "legitimate users" going through their API lose.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure it's technically possible to scrape Amazon. I'm much less confident that it would be legal.

<comment><USER13> Amazon has made it much harder to scrape their site in recent months. They now give captchas to bots that try and access their site to often by the same IP address. Unless you have a very large pool of low cost proxies, crawling millions of prices on a daily basis is challenging. I think this is what he's referring to when he says """and has lately made it very difficult to get the data in other ways."""

<comment><USER14> The best way to do this is with your users using a Chrome extension to feed the data back to you. User lands on a page? Send the data back to your scrapper processing API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They mention [http://camelcamelcamel.com/](http://camelcamelcamel.com/) \- but I don't get why they haven't got the axe as well.

<comment><USER16> I was wondering this as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've not seen priceonia before - what's the difference between that and camelcamelcamel?

Reading the blog post it seems as though camelcamelcamel will be forced to shut at soon, too?

<comment><AUTHOR> I use Pricenoia to check prices in the different european Amazons, because pretty much all items can be shipped to other countries within Europe. As far as I know camelcamelcamel doesn't do that :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just found and have been using PriceZombie [http://www.pricezombie.com/](http://www.pricezombie.com/) ... does this effect them as well?

</comment><comment><USER19> This is the norm with Amazon.

They will shutdown your account, take your money, and ignore your emails/not give you any real reason why they shut it down.

Amazon is an evil company that abuses their monopoly position on a daily basis.

On top of this, when you are a seller, they get to keep your customers. You can't contact them outside of Amazon or get any personal info.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.tropicalprice.com](http://www.tropicalprice.com) is another alternative, without the fancy features of pricenoia like graphs and other info.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was looking at the Uber API, and thought about comparing prices between Uber and Lyft... then I read this blog post on Pricenoia and it changed my mind.

It does seem like a gamble to work with a company's API. It also seems like free work, but perhaps with donations you could make it work.

<comment><USER18> If you understand it to be a temporary venture and plan for the next step, you can still use API's etc. and create unique web apps that will attract users and give you either publicity or short term revenue.

<comment><USER21> My primary goal when starting any business is to create a sustainable, reliable income.

Also, I like to focus on businesses that, once I set my vision in place for satisfying customers, I can guarantee that the service will be there for my customers.

<comment><USER18> That's fine... my point was that temporary businesses/platforms can provide you the assets (exposure/cash/partnerships) needed to launch your sustainable, reliable income.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure why you are arguing with me. I have stated what I am interested in when in comes to building a new business.

I am not looking for exposure, cash or partnerships -- those aren't the problem at all -- but I am looking for sustainable, trustworthy, long-term business ideas.

I have no problem building a business on another business' API's, but based on the track record of doing so, and your comments about them being temporary by nature, I think I will stay away from them.

I think we're in agreement there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks to be only a matter of time before amazon seek out other targets, such as pricezombie.com, camelcamelcamel.com

</comment><comment><USER23> Could this be a hint at a larger business move? Such as, unique pricing by customer?

</comment><comment><USER24> Semantics3 (www.semantics3.com) has been tracking Amazon for almost 2 years now (we have price histories to boot!). We can, and do still offer price comparison functionality for products sold on Amazon; you can also compare these prices against other domains.

<comment><USER25> I'm a happy customer of Semantics3, although the number of products they have data for isn't overwhelming.</comment></comment>


Tetrahedral Tessellation Experiments - <AUTHOR> https://www.shaderoo.org/?shader=zh8I1X <comment><USER2> Hangs at "scene loading..." on Firefox

<comment><USER3> I see two errors in the console. The first:

        ReferenceError: genDataFromText is not defined

This is because genDataFromText is defined inline in the main page _after_ shaderoo.js loads.

 _Edit: now that I think about it, just because shaderoo.js is loaded first, doesn 't mean getDataFromText will by called immediately. I don't have the time to debug or even just read someone else's code right now, so I'll just leave it at that._

The second:

        NotAllowedError: The play method is not allowed by the user agent or the platform in the current context, possibly because the user denied permission.

Alas Firefox is failing to tell me where exactly in the code the error is coming from.

I also see this warning:

        Loading failed for the <script> with source "http://127.0.0.1:8081/socket.io/socket.io.js?_=1585039727308".

That's true, I'm not hosting anything on [http://127.0.0.1:8081](http://127.0.0.1:8081) :eyeroll:

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, thanks for the comprising debug info... yes, the first error might not be crucial... i think i tracked down the reason, its due to some new code-inline- image feature i'm currently testing. some lines too long in the shader code - firefox doesn't seem to like that... i'm on it...

and the socket stuff is for remote osc-connections (you'd have to start a small server-script locally to use that - see shaderoo help-page)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is it trying to load a script from 127.0.0.1 ?

<comment><AUTHOR> its trying to communicate to an (optionally started) osc-bridge-script. (you can download this at shaderoo.org (see help section) and start it manually on your localhost to be able to communicate to an OSC-device to adjust parameters - e.g for VJ'ing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Crashed my Chrome on desktop

<comment><USER6> Works fine in Chrome on my old phone

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> problems with hanging on firefox should be fixed now. tell me if you still have trouble on other platforms/OS/etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> LOADING.......</comment>


How simulated annealing can improve your lunch - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.zesty.com/how-simulated-annealing-can-improve-your-lunch/

<comment><USER2> Interesting approach. Do you know of other marketplace models applying similar algorithmic matching frameworks?

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the nice things about this approach is that it's broadly applicable to almost anything pre-scheduled. We use similar optimizations for matching drivers with jobs that need doing, and for optimizing routes across our system.</comment></comment>


The "Bus Test" Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ard_adam/the-bus-test-considered-harmful-b431216db9cc <comment><USER2> > If you lose an employee and you don't hurt for at least a few weeks while > the organization realigns itself to manage the loss, then that employee was > likely not worth having around in the first place. It should hurt to lose > them. The better they are, the more it should hurt.

I think this misunderstands what the bus test means. It's not about "would there be _zero_ impact if we lost this person", it's about "is there a _way to adapt_ to losing them?"

A super high-productivity person who improves others is never an easy loss to weather. That's very different from someone whose work is not understood sufficiently for others to take it over--even with lower productivity.

If new, helpful ideas are getting rejected because they don't pass the bus test, it's not a situation of "the company just wants you to be a seamlessly replaceable cog in a wheel". Something else is going on: either the ideas aren't actually as good as the idea-haver thinks, or there's a political/communication problem between approvers and innovators. Very rarely is employee replaceability the real reason for rejection.

> Most importantly, every engineer yearns to make new, innovative, unique > contributions to his company. And it is precisely these unique contributions > that will yield more advantageous market positions in the future.

Not always. This is why I suspect that something else is going on, and it sounds like it might be someone who doesn't want to work on "boring" stuff whose managers are trying to find a way to tell them "no, we don't actually need a complete/bespoke/novel rebuild of this system--we need you to improve upon what we already have" in a way that lets them down easy, so they use the bus test as a deflection.

> start valuing and rewarding people who make themselves indispensable.

Absolutely not. Value and reward people who make themselves _valuable_ and improve others. Someone whose goal is indispensability is usually a massive liability (or a sociopath). Indispensable employees are usually much less valuable than those who improve others--whether through mentoring or just consistently setting the bar really high.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Google force country redirects? - <AUTHOR> In the old days, you could use the google.com/ncr "trick" to avoid being redirected to a local version of Google. That stopped working long ago.
Why do companies insist on redirecting to local versions of sites based on IP address geolocation? If a user wanted google.fr, shouldn't that be what they type? If they want google.com, shouldn't that be respected?
Why does "the web" (meaning a large number of websites) attempt to infer both your location as well as what you want? google.com reflects a user's intent of going to google.com, while google.fr respects a users intent to go to the French "version" of Google.
For example, searching for "4x4 mountain lodges California" from google.com, while located in France, provides a tripadvisor.fr result at the top. Even though I might physically be in France, that's irrelevant to my search query -- unless my search query were in French, then it would be more relevant than a tripadvisor.com result.
Why do companies like Google ignore the user's intent -- and why we tolerate that? For Apple's iTunes Store, as a counter example, I can switch to whatever store matches a billing credit card address, which is fair enough. But with Google, it seems that you are being actively blocked from searching how you might want to search. "Use in English" or "Use Google.com" doesn't solve the issue, because the search results are still using location. Even Duck Duck Go infers your location from your IP. "The search engine that doesn't track you." That might be true, but it's still using geolocation, which, to me still feels like an violation of both user intent as well as privacy. Just as a street address represents a specific, exact place, shouldn't web addresses? If I call the US phone number for Marriott, they don't answer the phone in French because I might be calling from there. So why the hell do websites do that?
Why did we let the web get so broken? <comment><USER2> I am working for an American company in France connecting to the internet through a London proxy and I always got the local Polish page.</comment>


Microsoft Schedules Upgrade to Windows 10 Without Users' Consent - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-schedules-upgrade-to-windows-10-without-users-consent-504095.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> If you don't want this auto upgrade, here is a tool for that. [https://www.grc.com/never10.htm?1](https://www.grc.com/never10.htm?1)</comment>


Hardening the Linux desktop - <AUTHOR> https://www6.software.ibm.com/developerworks/education/l-harden-desktop/index.html <comment><USER2> Requires username and password?

</comment><comment><USER3> Public facing intro page.

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/edu/l-dw-linux- harde...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/edu/l-dw-linux-harden- desktop-i.html)

But yeah, article access needs ID and password. For some reason, IBM continues to insist on posting some of this stuff behind a registration wall, while publicly posting other apparently very similar articles publicly. It's annoying.

(Anyone from IBM on here and know why IBM continues to do this, and what the distinction is between public and registered-users-only postings?)

My ID and password, which I got years ago, were free. Don't know whether free registration is still the case.</comment>


Show HN: AI Transformer – Keras2C Without Tensorflow - <AUTHOR> https://www.aitransformer.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Dear all, I am a part of a research group at the University Of Auckland. Our bigger vision is to create a set of tools for safety critical application of DNNs. This includes a formal approach for composition of multiple NNs, static timing analysis, and correct by construction approaches for SW/HW co-design.

Our first project is now live at [https://www.aitransformer.com/](https://www.aitransformer.com/) which is basically an enhanced Keras2C utility. Unlike the alternatives, the generated code doesn't depend on anything like TensorFlow C Library. This makes the code amenable to static timing analysis and perhaps more light-weight. If you use C code for AI application, or use AI in embedded systems and edge compute, we would love to hear from you. Leave comments. Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: Calculate the DHash of an image in Ruby - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rohanpatel2602/ruby-dhash/tree/master <comment><USER2> More on the DHash: [http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/?/archives/529-Kind-of- Like...](http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/?/archives/529-Kind-of-Like- That.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Best Display to Code & Design? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I currently own an 11' MacBook Air and wanted to get your feedback regarding external monitors/ display.
Some of the options I am considering include the Apple 27' Thunderbolt Display or maybe a projector (such as the ViewSonic PJD5133 SVGA).
I would love to know what external monitor/ display you are currently using and what is it that you love/ hate about it.
Thanks,
Carl <comment><USER2> A projector! I never thought of using a projector for an external monitor/display. It sure sounds cool. But from discussion here - <http://ask.metafilter.com/95233/monitor-vs-projector>, it appears there are a host of issues with them - resolution, lighting, cost. which would make it not a good choice for coding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point regarding lighting and resolution. As for cost, it seems that prices have gone wayyy down since 2008 - here is a decent looking one on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-PJD5133-SVGA-DLP- Projector/d...](http://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-PJD5133-SVGA-DLP- Projector/dp/B005EV1R8Y/ref=sr_1_4)

Thanks for your feedback septerr!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My experience is that for image/colour quality, the number one thing you want is a display using IPS tech. I believe that Apple 27" is such.

</comment><comment><USER4> I switched to iMac 27" and it has made all the difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback oxwrist - that's the one I'm inclined to get :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Apple 27' Display is extremely nice, but in my opinion it's not worth the money. Get a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter and a cheaper monitor.

<comment><USER6> If you can't afford, or can't justify, a cinema display - try this: [http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-013-...](http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-013-HO)

The actual screen itself is the same screen that Apple put in their cinema displays (2560x1440 IPS, etc) but it's over half the price. There _are_ a few downsides though: the monitor case isn't as nice as the aluminium cinema display, though IMO is still pretty good. Also the sound quality of the built- in speakers is pretty terrible. Still, you could buy an amazing set of speakers and still have change left from a cinema display budget :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet, thanks a lot kaolinite!</comment></comment></comment>


This test tells you if you're really cut out to be an entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3046663/this-test-tells-you-if-youre-really-cut-out-to-be-an-entrepreneur

<comment><USER2> welp, guess who's got two thumbs and is the next steve jobs?

\- this guy</comment>


Why Eating Meat Is Unhealthy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/meat-wars/599728/ <comment><USER2> I only eat meat a few times a week, and I'm going to die anyway, so I see no reason to abstain. It's not like life in the USA is so peachy for most people that it's actually worth extending...</comment>


Groupon 1% conversion rate for salons - <AUTHOR> http://dylancollins.com/?p=297

<comment><USER2> I'm currently an intern at a large daily deals site. I often hear my bosses talk about if businesses use our site and run deals, they'll attract a new customer base that have never heard of them before. For some types of businesses I can see that being true, but not really for salons. Our biggest sellers our typically salon type services (mani/pedis, hair removal, massages, etc.). Since customers know that these types of deals show up on our sites often, why would they ever pay full price?

Say you got a deal for a $20 mani/pedi and you get great service and everything goes well. A month later you need another one, and you see another deal to a different place for $20 again. Our site, as well as other reputable deal sites, only put businesses that have good feedback online, so the customer is pretty much guaranteed to get a good experience regardless of the salon - giving the customer no incentive to go back to the original salon.</comment>


Rr 3.0 Released with x86-64 Support - <AUTHOR> http://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/12/rr-30-released-with-x86-64-support.html

<comment><USER2> As I previously had no idea what Rr is, I googled it a bit.

So for others: It's a tool to record executable execution and play it back later for debugging purposes.

[http://rr-project.org/](http://rr-project.org/) [http://rr- project.org/rr.html](http://rr-project.org/rr.html)

<comment><USER3> As someone that works in R I find this fact funny that a language uses the name Rr. I can't image the pain of using Google to find an answer. I thought search Google with R was bad enough. R is also now 3.1 so that actually might hurt even more.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The rr-dev mailing list has this comment[0] from roc:

 _I expect rr 4.0 will be either ARM support or gdb reverse execution, whichever one is done first._

[0] [https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rr- dev/2014-December/0002...](https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rr- dev/2014-December/000201.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to reversible debugging in GDB? I guess it addresses the increased overhead (some say 1000x) that UndoDB tries to fix.

</comment><comment><USER5> This sounds excellent, I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to give it a spin. The process tree aspect is particularly cool.

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome!</comment>


States need a financial and environmental incentive for energy efficiency. Boom: - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125616727379000149.html

<comment><USER2> That's not what the article says.</comment>


Every teenager today was born this century. Trust is different for web natives - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ben_longstaff/every-teenager-today-was-born-this-century-trust-is-different-for-digital-natives-d553e6f0169f <comment><USER2> > _the gate keepers of old media kept us safe by drip feeding us outrage. Now > we are drinking from the social media firehose, always on, always connected, > constantly fatigued._

> _Choose your channel and pick your side, you're either with us or against > us. All those complex issues boil down to a binary yes or no, this is what > defines who you are, are you good or evil?_

Quite the heavy, negative manifesto for a piece about the negative undertone of common words.

I don't quite know how word frequency necessary has anything to do with trust (or lack thereof), but.. Interesting to see that "milkshake duck" made the 2017 list.</comment>


Grou.ps Raises $1.1 Million And Goes Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/groups_seriesa_open_source.php <comment><USER2> A trivial search turns up plenty of copies including this one [http://www.silobreaker.com/DocumentReader.aspx?Item=5_873749...](http://www.silobreaker.com/DocumentReader.aspx?Item=5_873749762)

<comment><USER3> Yeah sure, but there has to be a reason readwriteweb.com deleted it. So this was more a question why this is gone...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Gone?</comment>


"I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4tgsaz/iama_i_built_a_fusion_reactor_in_my_bedroom_ama/ <comment><USER3> This kid is awesome but this particular comment really made me sad:

"Spending 3+ hours a day on a project during junior and senior year did not help my grades. My counselor told me that I wouldn't get into the top colleges because of this reason. I believed her and didn't apply to my dream colleges."

<comment><USER4> And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong.

I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.

<comment><USER5> I would have to imagine these days average high school GPA for incoming freshman to MIT is > 4.0

<comment><USER6> No need to imagine. It has been sampled and estimated: < 4.0 [0]

'04-'05 seems to be the last year MIT reported high school GPA's [1]; probably because the number is meaningless.

[0] [http://www.acceptancerate.com/schools/massachusetts- institut...](http://www.acceptancerate.com/schools/massachusetts-institute-of- technology)

[1] [http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2005/c.html](http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2005/c.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A video of their reactor setup, including a part where they prep and run it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU)

<comment><USER8> This is great. A couple of high school kids just blew me away. I had to look up safe radiation levels after watching their Geiger counter. (Apparent answer: that's a lot of radiation, but a pretty short exposure.)

Side note: the view of the hills and mountains from the reactor room is gorgeous.

<comment><USER7> > _Side note: the view of the hills and mountains from the reactor room is > gorgeous._

Agreed. The twins' fusor.net profile says the they live in Berkeley, CA, a suburb across the bay from San Francisco. At 1min into the video I'm fairly the shot is from Berkeley looking across the bay to San Francisco. The mountains in the background look like the ones just south of San Francisco.

If you head a bit farther up the hill from where they say they live, the view is quite pretty: [https://simplyrunningonfaith.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/img...](https://simplyrunningonfaith.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/img_0751.jpg)

Actually now I think about it the city of Berkeley passed an ordinance declaring it a Nuclear-free zone, so I wonder if this project is legal.

<comment><USER9> AFAICT, berkeley's nuclear free ordinance only covers weapons research and development.

<comment><USER10> The intent of the ordinance is also "to prohibit nuclear reactors." [1] No person shall operate or build a nuclear reactor the City of Berkeley, and that would probably include this project.

That's not to say I agree with it. Berkeley has long been a hub of unhealthy NIMBYism, and this law is a leftover from the Cold War. I'd like to see that change.

[1] [http://www.codepublishing.com/CA/Berkeley/cgi/NewSmartCompil...](http://www.codepublishing.com/CA/Berkeley/cgi/NewSmartCompile.pl?path=Berkeley12/Berkeley1290/Berkeley1290.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read these things and I smile because the stories will help others step outside their self imposed limitations and do things. When I was growing up I had a number of people who allowed me to dream big things and try them out when others would consider them too much work or too crazy. I got there by reading stories about some of the earliest inventors of our time and their home spun laboratories.

There is a lot you can do with a supportive family.

<comment><USER12> I had a strict no "high-anything" rule for my basement bedroom. No high temperatures, no high voltages, no high amperages, no high velocity, no high pressure, no high vacuum, no high anything :(. At least I made my desktop sound like a jet engine, so that's something.

<comment><USER13> At least you can still experiment with vacuum pressures!

<comment><USER14> Liquid nitrogen here we come!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to wonder if college is actually the right choice altogether. The brothers basically learned everything on their own and most importantly actually shipped. Seems like a solid investment for some tech company to just offer them a job doing whatever research work they want for a year or two and seeing how it goes. Supposedly there's a job shortage in tech...here's an opportunity to sign a couple of HS students that build a reactor (and some other cool things) for kicks. I mean yeah sure they didn't build a fancy webapp but surely people at Tesla, Google whoever read Reddit.

The pros for college are access to lab stuff and some smart people + what you learn. I believe they can do the learning on their own just fine and well access to cool tech toys is also readily available at most tech companies...and there's also a lot of smart people around.

</comment><comment><USER16> I made a lengthy comment below about my son, but now after watching the YouTube video, I am sad I do not have the resources to let him have such equipment.

My son pulls off some cool experiments all on his own (I stay out of it apart from the phone call consultation, or YouTube video call) with salvage and other workarounds, with the money he earns and my contributions.

These brothers have a freakin' mini-Tony-Stark lab in their house! Good for them and their parents. I like to see money spent this way rather than traveling team sports and uniforms. My take is sciency types, aka nerds, indulge more in solitary sports - rock climbing, skating, biking if they have time away from building a frigging nuclear fusion reactor in the bedroom!

<comment><USER17> Don't fret - constraints can be a boon, too, making your son more creative. It is not really important to build a fusion reactor, you can just as well build other cool things that cost less.

Or you can learn business and marketing skills, which you will need anyway if you want to do something great.

For example, your son could set up some sort of Kickstarter collecting money for his fusion reactor. Or get in touch with universities asking for help. And so on.

I mean I agree that resources make a difference - for example I have heard many science project winners actually had help and got to use their parents labs. But don't let it dissuade you, don't give up.

<comment><USER16> Thanks guys. This is why I visit HN regularly to read and hear others, and voice my own humanity.

He started down the Kickstarter, Patreon road, but after a slew of failed and negative stories this past year on unfulfilled projects, angry supporters, he decided to go it his own.

He does juice out as much as he can with what he has to overcome any given constraints, but that only goes so far. Believe me, I am now living in the rice fields of East Java, and sometimes no amount of time or creative thinking wins the day for certain things out here (lack of cobra anti-venom, or time to get it). I do enjoy the challenge though, and have done some cool stuff on a shoe-string budget.

He's starting his won business fixing things people otherwise throw out - <USER2> ReAnimators! (not of the Lovecraftian movie). Sort of like the old TV/Radio repair shops that are gone. The business would not be too viable years back, but there is a lot of movement this way - the environment, built-in obsolescence (which is now being challenged by consumer groups and repair- oriented companies in court), and the joy of keeping the old piece of junk you are comfy with!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stuff like this always reminds me of this kid (adult now): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson)

<comment><USER19> It's the same group, and probably very similar devices. the fusor.net website is a community for building these things and has loads of plans and tips.

<comment><USER20> Do you know of site that has a directory of such forums? I find these forums of experts very fascinating but not that easy to find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is pretty neat, and I managed easily located plans for a DIY fusion reactor at home [0]. I'm curious if OP's build differs from these plans, and if so, how/why.

Digging into the wikipedia article I found this interesting/surprising:

Recent Developments [1]:

 _" Most recently, the fusor has gained popularity among amateurs, who choose them as home projects due to their relatively low space, money, and power requirements. An online community of "fusioneers", The Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, or Fusor.net, is dedicated to reporting developments in the world of fusors and aiding other amateurs in their projects. The site includes forums, articles and papers done on the fusor, including Farnsworth's original patent, as well as Hirsch's patent of his version of the invention."_

Apparently there's an entire online community of amateur home nuclear reactor builders [2].

[0] [http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Fusion- Reactor/](http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor#Recent_developments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor#Recent_developments)

[2] [http://www.fusor.net/](http://www.fusor.net/)

<comment><USER19> fusor.net is the hub for these things, it's really quite an impressive resource. He says in the AMA he's registered there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of Phineas and Ferb:

"Aren't you a little young to be building a nuclear reactor?"

"Yes, yes we are."

</comment><comment><USER23> This is so great to see young people accomplish such greatness, compared to world news lately

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazing work by this young man! My children will love this.

My son and daughter are both doing well, but my son loves to experiment outside of school.

I have been encouraging my son to experiment and learn, and he has taken it to a higher level than I had imagined. I have bought him a telescope, and a 3D printer over the years. He works for his own equipment and supplies too. More each year.

Some of his experiments or demonstrations are recreated and slightly modified YouTube projects, and others are very original. I always tell him that being able to duplicate somebody else's work is good practice to learn proper rigor and familiarity with equipment and practices.

He is now a senior in high school, maintaining an A+ (>= 95) average in honor and AP classes. He won best Chemistry project in the whole county.

His biggest complaint is the amount of homework schools still dish out, several hours (3 to 4) each night. It takes away from his self-teaching and experimentation. Disclaimer: I am not too keen on public or institutionalized education. I think you learn more by doing projects that tie-in various disciplines, and accordingly I dropped out of college in the 80s to follow my passions. I've done well for myself considering I grew up below the poverty line when I was younger.

I was smelting metals in the 90s in my rural backyard without the internet or YouTube, and playing with TV cathode ray tubes in the late 70s. The former I could not have done where I grew up in Brooklyn, the latter was good to do most anywhere while tube sets were still around ;) I once tied the negative lead of a 9 volt DC transformer to my then sick Mom's big toe, and the other to a potted fern with copiously-watered soil, and then touched her same top foot with a connecting lead from the plant! Yes, stupid, but I was 10, and I had just read Frankenstein. Plus my parents were very positive about my inquisitive nature and doings. Mom passed in her older years, but never forgot the incident in a proud way.

My son is thinking on going to Germany for school due to the quality of education, and the fact that it is now free (almost, minus taxes and other expenses) for foreigners as well as citizens. He is also considering just starting on his own after high school, since he has acquired my distaste for institutionalized learning. The short of this bias: age-segregation, broken curriculum, non-integrated areas of study, homework and memorization over problem solving, etc. You can't even do certain experiments in school because they are considered too dangerous, or inappropriate. I do not try and push him too much either way. My ex-wife, is more conservative, and is hoping he will go to university.

Time will tell...

<comment><USER24> Your son may enjoy universities with project-based curricula like Olin College.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for helping me pull my head out of my ass. I never heard of Olin; I'll check it for sure.

It looks like a great school!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "living things should not be within 35 feet as x-ray radiation is quite high"

hopefully this is a house in a low-density suburb and not an apartment. amazing achievement, but at the same time very dangerous to be generating x-rays out of your bedroom.

<comment><USER26> He probably didn't actually run it in his bedroom, just built it there.

<comment><USER8> Um... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU)

(From another top-level comment.)

<comment><USER26> Yeah, after I posted, I saw a comment saying his mom would leave the house whenever he wanted to run a test. Crazy.

<comment><USER27> On the other hand, that's one hell of a mom. I figure most moms these days would shut the project down from the get-go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let's hope there is some supervison.

There had been kids who built atomic reactor in their parents house and garden shed. Needless to say it's nowadays a superfund site and some people suffer from poising and radioactive materials. I think there is even a documentary about the boy scout guy who built a atomic reactor and afaik it was on HN before.

[disclaimer: While the reaction vacuum chamber seen in the video can be found at universities and is certainly less harmful than an open atomic reactor (see real boy scout guy story from above), it never the less involves substances that have to be handled with great care]

Edit: the boy scout guy David Hahn built an radiactive reactor at home, he was 17 years: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn)

<comment><USER29> That was most likely a fission reactor.

In this case it is a deuterium-deuterium fusion reactor and both the fuel and the waste (helium 3) are pretty safe to handle. The device is only radioactive while it is operating.

That being said, he did say that he got tons of help from professors so at the very least he knows exactly how to remain safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> He made it into the Neutron Club, people who have generated neutrons from fusion reactions: [http://www.fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=13](http://www.fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=13)

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow! I wonder what exact steps are involved in getting from "I want to build a fusion reactor" to actually having a working prototype in your room. He mentions fusor.net; am I right in assuming that there are entire communities dedicated to building this kind of stuff? What is their history? How did they get started? Were they around before the internet? Fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER32> Hypothetically, if you were the parent of such a child (or such an adult offspring), how should you make sure that they stay safe if what they are working on is beyond your capacity to evaluate?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wish I had grown up in an environment flush with resources for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER34> The link is returning a 503 error: "all of our servers are busy right now. please try again in a minute"

Looks like the Fusion Reactor story caused a meltdown of Reddit's servers :)

<comment><USER35> Was probably a hiccup, the AMA loads fine for me now, and I'm on free airplane wifi :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who backed these guys financially? And how much did they spend?

<comment><USER37> The AMA says 6k. They got it from working part-time and family

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Amazing accomplishment from such a young team.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm mostly concerned that he's going to get sick from improper shielding or something.

</comment><comment><USER40> Creating a neutron generators is pretty trivial. Get some pyro electric crystal and apply heat. pyroelectric fusion nuetron genrator.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe add a "Show HN: "

<comment><USER42> This looks more like a "Show reddit".

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> In before "is it energy neutral?"

<comment><USER44> It's a Farnsworth fusor, of course it's not. It's an enormous accomplishment for a couple of high school kids all the same - kind of makes you think of _Rocket Ship Galileo_ , minus the moon Nazis.

<comment><USER45> When people see something like this, I think they immediately think of Tony Stark, or the Wright Brothers. Something quite romanticized. This teenage is probably smarter than I am, but he's not breaking even in his bedroom.

He also mentions building a laser.

> _a wood burning CO2 laser turret_

I'd be interested in the details about that. I did some research about what it would take to build a basic laser years and years ago, but gave up when I saw the kind of chemicals I'd need to handle. I wasn't confident I could deal with the chemicals correctly in my tiny apartment.

<comment><USER46> I've looked into that as well. There are a bunch of lasers that are DIY-able, and AFAIK dye-based lasers are the only ones that really require "chemicals".

TEA lasers are basically just a few pieces of metal and high-voltage, seen them at high-school level quite a few times: [http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/tealaser/tealaser7.htm](http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/tealaser/tealaser7.htm)

CO2 lasers are relatively complex and are easiest if you buy some parts readymade, but can be completely homebuild as well: [http://jarrodkinsey.org/co2laser/co2laser.html](http://jarrodkinsey.org/co2laser/co2laser.html)

There are tons of ressources online, a good overviw over different possibilities and basic information can be found here: [http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserfaq.htm#faqtoc](http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserfaq.htm#faqtoc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If they weren't doing this in a suburb I'd say 'Congrats'\-- but to knowingly be generating x-rays in a residential neighborhood is really, really selfish and disrespectful to neighbors.

<comment><USER48> I think this is overstating the risk a little bit.

Looking at the video linked elsewhere, this was run in a bedroom on the second or even third floor of a single-family residence. He mentions not being able to detect x-rays more than 35ft from the device. I think a neighbor would have to be trying to get in range to be affected.

Here's the video again, queued up to the view out the bedroom window: [https://youtu.be/92M5qcjDkaU?t=1m5s](https://youtu.be/92M5qcjDkaU?t=1m5s)

<comment><USER29> One of the the few times where the inverse square law is helpful.

<comment><USER49> Reminds me of this: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/](https://what- if.xkcd.com/29/)

What's lethal at 3 inches probably isn't measurable at 50 feet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"I Don't Know, Probably Made My Usual C" - <AUTHOR> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/12/12/fedex/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting how much we (specifically Americans, but it may be a wider phenomenon than that) really love success stories that follow from academic mediocrity or failure. This is a perfect example: we really want Fred Smith to have built his business on an idea that got a bad grade in school. A really common example is the misconception that Albert Einstein did badly in school.

<comment><USER3> I don't know how widespread this was, but when I was a youngster, people started noticing that high achieving people tend to both do well in the workplace and in school. Many took that visible correlation to mean that school is what causes one to become a high achiever, and from there started pushing the idea that you will be forever stuck working for minimum wage at McDoanlds if you do not graduate from top academic programs.

While, from an adult perspective, it is logically silly and a violation of all standard economic models, when impressionable children are hearing this from respected adults on a frequent basis it is something that sticks in the mind.

Now the people I grew up with are adults, doing just fine for themselves, and most are certainly not stuck forever working at McDonalds for minimum wage, no matter how less than stellar their academic track record ended up being. I feel these success stories are appealing to these people because it is a sort of "I told you so" moment towards those who pushed the wrong message on them.

<comment><USER4> We also exaggerate the addictive potential of drugs. For the most part, only a fraction of individuals, those particularly genetically prone to serious drug addiction, will suffer. Moreover, environment is often a strong causative factor in almost all forms of addiction.

Yet there are good reasons for exaggerating addiction potential to young children. Taboos are a coarse but effective social mechanism, and maintaining them often requires lying. Moreover, it's far easier and cheaper (especially given paucity of our scientific knowledge) than attempting to identify those particular children and adults most likely to become addicted.

Likewise, exaggerating the necessity for going to college is a cheap and easy way to guide expectations and channel effort. It's no surprise that upper- middle class children both graduate from college at higher rates _and_ generally have much better economic prospects--it's because of this very sort of unquestioned enculturation. Same phenomenon for Asian groups and other highly successful subgroups within society.

Reality will intrude soon enough. You don't need to tell a kid that Santa Claus doesn't exist; he'll figure it out. The only difference between that and other cultural lies is that when a kid figures out there's no Santa Claus he doesn't have a life-long chip on his shoulder or believe that he uniquely outsmarted the man. But when it comes to drugs, college, and now apparently homeownership, people seem to think they've attained some sort of unique, hard-won insight. And that cynicism is the only reasonable reaction.

I grew up super poor. Nobody ever told me to go to college. In fact, adults ridiculed "book learning" and school counselors exaggerated the unavoidable costs of college. But I did go to college--a private one with a generally elite upper-middle-class and upper-class student body. Both cultures lied to their children, but as an adult I can tell you which lie I'd have much preferred. And I can't say I'd have preferred the cold, hard truth, either. The truth is usually far more difficult, if not impossible, to articulate, especially to young people. Indeed, the truth usually requires context that just doesn't exist when you're talking about the distant future.

<comment><USER3> Drugs are another good example. When we hear stores about people like Steve Jobs and other success stories having used drugs, and even sometimes crediting their success to drug use, we get a similar feelings toward those who told us the wrong stories. I suppose there is something satisfying about showing them that they were wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read elsewhere that the professor had a rule that you should not write a paper about anything illegal. That was because during the 1960s at least one idiot wrote a paper like "I'm gonna start a marijuana farm and make millions!!!!!!" So the professor had a rule, no papers about starting marijuana farms, or any other illegal idea.

The FedEx that became successful in the 1970s was borderline illegal a few years earlier. Regulations were reduced during the 1970s and then finally phased out when President Jimmy Carter deregulated the transportation industry in 1980. So Fred Smith's idea was in the same category as starting a marijuana farm. Both ideas faced hostile governmental overview. This is indirectly acknowledged in the quote from Esquire:

"His skeptical professor didn't think such a business had a ghost of a chance, considering the airline industry's intense competition and heavy regulation."

Right, in the 1960s the idea would have been very difficult, but regulations changed a during the 1970s and largely ended in 1980. FedEx's big success in the 1970s and 1980s was made possible thanks to the change in regulations.

<comment><USER6> > made possible thanks to the change in regulations.

And a USPS that was notorious for losing mail at the time.

<comment><USER7> Still notorious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tangentially relevant: this HN thread from 2015 has some fascinating comments about the early days of FedEx, from one of its first employees.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9281466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9281466)

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems to me that if someone is used to getting Cs, and they don't remember what great they made on a term paper, it's a pretty good bet that they got a C.

</comment><comment><USER10> Similarly, Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial only earned a B in her architecture class at Yale.

[https://www.biography.com/news/maya-lin-vietnam-veterans- mem...](https://www.biography.com/news/maya-lin-vietnam-veterans-memorial)

<comment><USER11> Frankly, though, I think it's not that great. Sure, it has a lot of emotional resonance, but that's because the Vietnam War has lots of emotional resonance. Seen solely as a memorial, it's cold & impersonal. That kinda works, given Vietnam's role as the first U.S. victory[0] the country felt badly about.

[0] Yes, the U.S. won: North & South Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, in which North Vietnam agreed that the South Vietnamese people would be allowed to determine their own political future. It was only in 1974 & 1975, after Nixon's resignation, that North Vietnam again invaded South Vietnam, breaking the treaty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have to wonder if at some point an Esquire fact checker called up his professor and asked if he kept individual grades in ancient student records. My guess is that it has been too many years now and all records are lost.

<comment><USER13> He graduated in 1966, so it's been at least 51 years now. There's a pretty good chance the professor is dead, and a near-certainty he's retired. So I would say close to no chance at this point. Back when Esquire did the story in 1978, however, it had only been 12-15 years. It's within the realm of possibility the grade book would have been findable at that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I expected this article to be at least tangential to C programming. Glad to C otherwise, I'm almost grateful. I know C pretty well, though, and would miss or reinvent it if it wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER15> Maybe something else would have taken it's place and you would speculate about wanting to reinvent that instead if it didn't exist</comment></comment>


The wrong way to filter sockets with BPF - <AUTHOR> https://natanyellin.com/posts/ebpf-filtering-done-right/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting/elegant solution to the problem. I would certainly not have thought of doing that had I faced this.</comment>


Godot Engine 3.1 Alpha Freeze - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/21490 <comment><AUTHOR> Some Highlights to expect in 3.1:

* Soft Body support [https://godotengine.org/article/soft-body](https://godotengine.org/article/soft-body)

* Skeleton Inverse Kinematic (it is possible to procedurally change a skeleton pose!) [https://godotengine.org/article/skeleton-inverse-kinematic](https://godotengine.org/article/skeleton-inverse-kinematic)

* GLES2 support (3.0 only supports GLES3 atm, Godot 2.x supports GLES2) [https://godotengine.org/article/gles2-and-gdnative-progress-...](https://godotengine.org/article/gles2-and-gdnative-progress-report-7)

* Kinematic Body improvements [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-31-will-get-many-impro...](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-31-will-get-many-improvements-kinematicbody)

* New Animation Editor [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-brand-new-animati...](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-brand-new-animation-editor-cinematic-support)

* New Inspector (information about nodes like rigidbody's) [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-new-inspector](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-new-inspector)

* Ragdoll Support [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-ragdoll-system](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-ragdoll-system)

* 2D Skeleton Deform [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-2d-skeletal-defor...](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-2d-skeletal-deform)

* CSG Support [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-csg-support](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-gets-csg-support)

* New Axis Handling System (Controller Joy) [https://godotengine.org/article/handling-axis-godot](https://godotengine.org/article/handling-axis-godot)

(Changes ripped from u/SaltTM on reddit here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9as1ju/godot_31_al...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9as1ju/godot_31_alpha_freeze/))</comment>


How Entire Industries Become Unethical - <AUTHOR> http://bhargreaves.com/2010/08/entire-industries-unethical/

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that the industries that trend to the most unethical (airlines, commercial real estate, cell phone carriers) also have the highest barriers to entry. Unfortunately, this only leaves cumbersome instruments like government regulation and unpredictable changes in the marketplace to impose ethics on industries that appear most likely to trend unethical.

<comment><USER3> Government regulation is what creates most barriers to entry. In general, the most unethical industries and professions are those that are most tied in to government in the first place. Especially where government provides the barriers to entry - professional and occupational licensing being just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER4> _"Government regulation is what creates most barriers to entry."_

Maybe the government regulation as practised by cronyist goverments. Seriously, I don't think that a hypothetical government enforcing standards for square feet measurement would create a huge barrier to entry into the property business.

<comment><USER2> As soon as there's a law about how to calculate square footage there will either be an agency to do the calculate the square footage, an agency to enforce it, or both. Oh, and some sort of tax/fee levied against commercial land-lords and the possibility of lawsuits all around. And that's assuming that the law doesn't require auditing and/or some sort of compliance documentation. I don't think you're really allowing for how onerous even "simple" regulation can be when lawyers and bureaucrats get ahold of it.

<comment><USER5> Weights and measures are already regulated in the U.S. This is why, when you pay for a gallon of gas, you can be sure you are getting an actual, standard gallon of gasoline. This in itself doesn't seem to create a barrier to entry for gas stations and protects the consumer.

<comment><USER6> It seems to me that you _can't_ be sure unless someone is auditing the weights or measures actually in use. Consumers can do a rough audit using their gas gauges, but it's not particularly precise.

<comment><USER7> In the US at least the state DOT's do go out and check on the pumps and check both that they are calibrated for liquid measure and that the gasoline falls within the acceptable temperature range (because warmer gasoline occupies a greater volume).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Used car dealers, real estate agents, building contractors, even pool cleaning services, whatever: Whenever I hear something or see something questionable or confusing in a contract or agreement that's explained to me as "boiler-pate" or "industry standard", I now just assume that its institutionalized dishonesty designed to screw me and give it an extra careful look.

<comment><USER9> Like the subject of the article, I think this is a kind of low-grade dishonesty. Annoying but basically how people a living.

I'd see really high-grade dishonesty in the entertainment industry, the gambling industry, in defense contracting or oil and extractive industries.

These are the industries that occur to me who wield monopoly power and/or buy governments.

<comment><USER10> Why is this perfectly reasonable, civil comment being downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >>>The airline industry is also clearly trending in this direction, as is higher education. Once an industry is at the bottom of an ethical slope, it is ripe for disruption by young companies that can sell through an honest, straightforward process.>>>

Sometimes I hope that companies like YC will disrupt the higher educational system in the US.

Going through YC is a much more strait forward process than education. The process is essentially join YC and work your ass off to _make_ yourself a job.

This makes a lot more sense to me than, pay a bunch of money for college, learn a bunch of random junk, get a degree after a set period of time, then show that degree to people who will hopefully be impressed and _possibly_ give you a job.

<comment><USER12> While I do think that higher education needs an overhaul, the larger problem is that HE is too often misunderstood. It's not a place where you learn skills that explicitly help you get a job; that's called vocational training, and a whole bunch of places do that extremely well. Hell, if all you're looking to do is work, you probably don't need college at all. Zoho's been hiring kid straight out of high school, with no discernible difference in productivity with their college educated counterparts ([http://blogs.zoho.com/general/how- we-recruit-on-formal-crede...](http://blogs.zoho.com/general/how-we-recruit- on-formal-credentials-vs-experience-based-education)).

HE is a place where you go to interact with people and ideas fundamentally different from what you know, receive mentoring on how to consider such ideas, and how to create those ideas on your own. It does not claim to make you a smarter individual, and its value is largely dependent on your own drive to make the experience a success. In essence, it is _exactly_ the same as YCombinator - even in the obfuscated and oft frustrating admissions processes, which is what I believe the article refers to.

<comment><USER13> What you are describing is a finishing school for the rich, which is what higher education used to be, a long time ago. That is no longer true.

If you want a white collar job in the US, you must go to college. Yes, there are some outliers, but having a degree is damn close to a hard requirement.

Pretending that is no longer true and indulging the liberal arts fantasy just makes the problem worse. There are too many kids who come out of college with debt and a degree in not having people take them seriously.

<comment><USER14> Turning universities _completely_ into vocational schools seems like it'd have a number of downsides though. The idea that students should be well-rounded and that it's good for society for educated people to have some basic core knowledge isn't only a "liberal arts fantasy", but also a "science fantasy". If you're training people strictly vocationally, not only humanities cores, but also science cores should go, or at least both should be greatly cut down to only those students who specifically need a particular class for their future careers (e.g. maybe CE students will still take intro physics as a prereq for semiconductor physics, but CS students would no longer take Physics 101, or Bio 101, or Chem 101, or any math classes not strictly needed for their CS training, etc.). If you wanted to be really hardcore about it, you could even assess classes based on their predictive earnings power, so if Physics 101 doesn't produce measurable gains in its graduates' earning power within 10 years, axe it.

<comment><USER15> Why can these students not have equivelent "Physics 101, or Bio 101, or Chem 101" within a highschool curriculum?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rather than an ethics problem, this seems like a unit of measure and communication problem.

The comparison to higher education is apt. Prices at community colleges (and many universities) are set in dollars per credit hour. Credit hours, though, aren't the same as clock hours. I taught a three credit hour class that met three times weekly and lasted fifty minutes a session. The school, naturally, advertised this discrepancy well in advance of taking payment. (I do wonder whether there's any case law about that.)

It seems that office managers are setting prices in dollars per real-estate square foot, which is a different unit of measure from the commonly understood measure of area. Maybe they should advertise "real-estate square feet of office space" instead of "square feet of office space" to eliminate the confusion that comes from overloading that phrase?

(Whether this sort of linguistic imprecision and flux is a good idea is a separate argument, to be sure. This sort of shenanigans increases the burden-- and therefore the cost-- for people trying to purchase a good or service.)

<comment><USER15> Credit hours are "points towards graduation".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This seems to be due to asymmetric information between seller and buyer. The buyer can not measure exactly the true area, which only the seller knows (buyer doesn't have access to the standards, the criteria that have been used, doesn't understand them, doesn't have time or is physically not allowed to measure it.)

<comment><USER18> No. The buyer absolutely can measure the exact area, and can probably do so with a children's plastic ruler, since as near as I can tell nobody rents office space anymore without looking at a PDF of a floorplan first.

<comment><USER17> Makes sense, but then I don't understand how owners get away with the practices they describe in the article.

<comment><USER18> Because rsf includes building common spaces, which tenants are in fact renting. This is not complicated.

Yes, it does appear plain that this "common spaces" business is a fig leaf that covers annual rent increases. And yes, that's dishonest. But it's of no practical import, since every tenant knows their rent is going up one way or another once their lease expires.

We're really making a big deal over whether "rent increase" is called "rent increase" or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd sue in a minute if someone tried this [ _]. Seriously. They will not be delivering the area you pay for.

[_] Well ok, I would measure the area myself to find that the area actually differed from what I was paying for.

<comment><USER20> Seriously, why isn't this litigated so that it becomes a uniform part of commerce/law?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So in short, it's a slippery slope but no one step looks particularly bad to the participants, but after a while, everyone else see's you playing in the mud at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER18> Apart from the semantic goofiness, how is this worse than the landlords simply raising the rent every year (which is clearly not unethical)?

<comment><USER22> What's not worse about it?

If a landlord raises the rent on a 400 square foot space, they're simply asking more money for it the same space. If a tenant wants to pay that price for 400 square feet, that's his choice.

On the other hand, if the landlord claims it's 420 square feet, no matter how much he charges per square foot, the tenant is paying for something that simply doesn't exist.

<comment><USER18> Landlords can phrase things in terms of $/rsf, but the lease specifies a monthly flat rate. It can't change until the lease expires. What am I missing about the bind this puts tenants in?

I get the semantic dishonesty, but not the practical issue.

<comment><USER4> Searching for offers, as explained in the article. The nonexistant square feet put the offer undeservingly high in the sqft/$ order which is what many tenants search by.

<comment><USER18> That's silly. It's unethical like SEO is unethical: annoying, but hardly damning. There must be something more to it than that.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but the SEO might cost you a click while such an offer might cost you a physical visit to a crappy office.

<comment><USER18> Again, this is pretty silly. If an agent led me into a bait-and-switch situation (ie, something advertised as 1400 rsf turns out to be a closet), I'd simply never use them again.

In practice, though, total moot point: the last time I looked for office space (earlier this year), the first agent I called sent me scaled floor plans for over 100 places. There were rsf numbers to go with them, but the dimensions of every office were right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The hard drive industry also has this problem. They adopted an incorrect yet defensible definition for 'MB', 'GB', etc. The result is that consumers and engineers have to multiply the advertised MB by 95%, GB by 93%, TB by 91%, PB by 89%, EB by 87%, etc. This will only get worse as storage sizes increase.

<comment><USER24> In this case they are using for its profit the difference in GB and GiB. They do not make the GB smaller each year, or add the caches to the total size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> [http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/The_Market_for_Lemons...](http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/The_Market_for_Lemons#Milk_in_India_in_the_1970s)

Probably in this case it would be enough to require inclusion of quotient between exclusive and total space in all advertisements and agreements.

There should be some bounds on advertisement. Can commercial lie about facts? Can it promote alcohol? Can it promote medication without obligatory warning?

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the real problem here is that the owners and leasers of an office space are the ones who are responsible for reporting the "square feet". The system would work just fine if an unbiased third party did the measurements.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, there's no incentive for the landlords to do this. That just leaves legislation or the sudden emergence of ethical competition. Oh, and don't forget that most of the larger commercial land lords have lobbying arms (at a local level at the very least) in order to oppose just that sort of thing.

<comment><USER26> This need not be legislated. If commercial renters were sufficiently biased in favor of places with an objectively determined square footage rating, landlords would provide it regardless of the lack of a legal requirement. The key is getting demand started.

This is currently an inefficient market, and more information would substantially improve it. And objectively measuring square feet is not particularly difficult or expensive.

What will probably happen is, eventually the misrepresentation of square footage will get so egregious that there will be a movement by commercial renters toward some sort of third-party measurement. The landlords will go along, because they want to rent their office space.

<comment><USER27> That's a reasonable suggestion if you're willing to wait a couple of generations (or potentially forever) for any improvement in the situation.

The first complication with this suggestion is that in cases of exploitation of information asymmetries like this, you don't know what you don't know. It's nice that this issue is getting a little public scrutiny here now, but one has to wonder how long it's been going on? And getting an issue like this more widely recognized, to a point where demand for transparency would be self- sustaining, is likely to require a lot of someone's time an effort to bootstrap. If a subset of buyer/leasers were to take this on openly, real estate owners would almost certainly seek to punish them directly, in addition to mounting their own counter-education campaign >>> politicization. Alternately, some third party might sense a commercial opportunity here, e.g., to provide public education and neutral measurement services -- but that's the same sort of business model that makes "trial lawyers" so popular...

It's unrealistic to assume that commercial renters are going to be broadly responsive to individual demands for transparency before the overwhelming majority of real estate seekers permanently embrace transparency as a make-or- break requirement for buy/lease decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation> are doing more harm than good to mankind in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER29> Don't forget to add title insurance to the list

<http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1113/148.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this all commercial real estate in the world, or just NYC?</comment>